I listen....a lot. It’s a pleasure and like most pleasures there is much to be gained by finding ways to luxuriate in its hold. In a broad definition of the term, ‘field recording’ has always been linked to extended listening, to the act of waiting for ones ears to open wider and wider. It is only the limitations of technology that allowed for the audio snapshot to slowly erode the concept of durational listening - to influence film, tv and recorded music / sound. The space available on wax cylinders and other early recoding mediums reduced discoveries to seconds or minutes. No one thought how this could, in turn, effect the way we hear the world. Much has been written or spoken about the positive effects of field recording. It is, for the most part, undeniable. However, the reduction of sound to tiny sections in order to diffuse the recordists discoveries still exerts a somewhat conventional influence even on those artists / recordists who consider themselves experimental. In fact, as is often the case, these ideas are just not considered. We must return, carrying with us the benefits of our gathered explorations, to experiencing the world unhindered by the limits of a technology. To use that technology as an addition but not to allow it to restrict our perceptions. To listen is the important part of this. To a quiet position: slow edition listen, limited only by our imagination and willingness to accept our place within environments.

For this edition of ‘a quiet position’ I have gathered pieces submitted through an open call for work considering aspects of slowness and durational listening, along with some pieces of my own. All of these are ‘recordings of fields’ - they reference the act of finding or placing sounds within environments - physical or ephemeral. The question of how these pieces are slow, durational, extended & how they can be taken as ‘field recordings’ is best left to the individual. I would only add that the field is limitless - the studio is merely a construct around a smaller field. It is how one approaches the field that is the key. (Jez Riley French)

aquietposition.tumblr.comjezrileyfrench.blogspot.com
Because of the size of this archive it has been split into A Quiet Position Slow Edition Parts 1 and 2 over two consecutive playlist pages. This is the page for Part Two - listen on the Pop-Ups on the links below: